Monday, 19 December 2011

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and
good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks
you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or
sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you
surprise yourself.”

— Neil Gaiman

It’s that time of the year when one remark, in different
permutations, seems to dominate our conversations. It’s about how the year flew
by so fast.

So a typical conversation would go something like this:
“Wow, its December already. The year just went by in a blur,” you say.

Of course, if we cast our minds back to the end of 2010,
or to the end of any year for that matter, we realise that such remarks are
seasonal in nature.

So how would you describe the year 2011 in two words or
less?

While it is good that we look forward to new things, the
reality is that most of us will be stuck with that “same old, same old” feeling
despite the dawn of a new year.

But is it really that same old familiar feeling all the
time?

I do not think so. When we find ourselves caught in such
a situation, our challenge should be to look at things from a new, and fresh,
perspective.

Note:- I am flying back to Malaysia to celebrate my litle sister wedding

Sunday, 4 December 2011

Imagine you are asked to watch
a short video (above) in which six people-three in white shirts and three in
black shirts-pass basketballs around. While you watch, you must keep a silent
count of the number of passes made by the people in white shirts. At some
point, a gorilla strolls into the middle of the action, faces the camera and
thumps its chest, and then leaves, spending nine seconds on screen. Would you
see the gorilla?

Almost everyone has the
intuition that the answer is "yes, of course I would." How could
something so obvious go completely unnoticed? But when this experiment done at
Harvard University several years ago, they found that half of the people who
watched the video and counted the passes missed the gorilla. It was as though
the gorilla was invisible.

It is not just for stage magic
or fun psychology experiments. It is a key factor in our frequent inability to
understand the world and make good decisions, and the ease with which we can be
misled.

We are all guilty of missing
the obvious, of failing to see the bigger picture because we are focusing on
narrower tasks in hand. And this inability to see the obvious can prevent us
from thinking more creatively. When we dedicate some time searching for
an answer/solution our brain starts to examine all the possibilities using all
resources available to find what we are seeking. However, if we are too
focussed all the time we can easily miss the gorilla or the curtains changing
colour and so on.

Seeing things from another
perspective is not always very easy depending on our personality. Sometimes we
are too stubborn or too attached to our own point of views which makes the
experience of trying new perspectives almost impossible. A solution for it is
to ask people with very different backgrounds what would they do if…? Children
are the best ones to ask, they come up with wonderful answers that might not
solve your problem but listening to these different perspectives will make our
brain take other paths and come up with unexpected and creative answers.

Look around, and we could be forgiven for believing that we can see a vivid
and detailed picture of your surroundings. Indeed, we may even think that our
eyes never deceive us. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for our brain.

Do you want to spot the gorilla
and everything else? Make sure we train our brain to be sharp enough to see
from all perspectives.